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The Footballer of Loos
A Story of the 1st Battalion London Irish Rifles in the First World War
By Ed Harris The History Press
Copyright © 2014 Ed Harris
All rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-0-7509-6250-6
CHAPTER 1
Sport and War
Towards the end of the First World War, in 1918, when asked by Prime Minister David Lloyd George to paint a picture showing collaboration between British and US troops, John Singer Sargent rejected the commission and instead painted 'Gassed', his epic depiction of the aftermath of a mustard gas attack on the Western Front. In it, he includes a discreet but stark reminder of the close proximities of sport and war. In the distance, beyond the haunting lines of blinded soldiers painfully groping their way to a field dressing station, a football match is taking place. Some commentators suggest that the wounded ranks of soldiers are making their way towards eternal redemption, or that the eerie yellow glow of the polluted sky is in fact the sun setting on a society wasteful of its youth. But it is in the contrast between suffering and play that Gassed is also a comment on how sport is often used as a metaphor for war. When war broke out in 1914, many thousands of young men were inspired by the words of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle to fight for their country: 'If a cricketer had a straight eye, let him look along the barrel of a rifle ... if a footballer had strength of limb let them serve and march in the field of battle.'
Fewer men were refused military service in 1914 than were accepted. The nation as a whole was marginally better nourished than the previous generation where the factory and the mill financing Britain's greatness continued to take its toll. However, relatively few of those fighting for survival in the industrial stews of the towns and cities could boast a straight eye or strength of limb. The value of a proper diet was identified after the Crimean War but still remained an issue at the time of the Boer Wars. In Edwardian Britain, the lesson still needed to be learned that a healthier workforce not only meant increased productivity but also a fitter fighting force.
Frank Edwards was born on 29 September 1893 to Alfred, a coachman and Emily Jane, a domestic servant, who were living just off the King's Road, Chelsea. In the 1960s this was the trendiest address in the world, but half a century earlier it was only marginally superior to the many decaying working class streets in the immediate area. The poverty and depredation, however, was relative to the upper middle class areas around Sloane Street, although much less onerous than the slums of London's East End. About a quarter of Chelsea's population was considered to be living in poverty when Frank, aged fourteen, was granted a requisition certificate from the Superintendent Registrar of Births and Deaths to enable him to quit school and begin full-time employment. The family had by this time moved out of the social housing provided by the Guinness Trust and were living at number 8 King Street, not far from the Stamford Bridge Athletics ground, acquired by Chelsea Football Club in 1905 when it was formed and entered the Football League. Fulham – the oldest of London's first class football clubs with a history stretching back to 1879 – had settled at Craven Cottage in 1896. As Frank grew up, so the game of football became a part of his life. Nearby Chelsea Barracks represented an even earlier connection with football history when the British Army was called upon to break up an unruly village game between the Derbyshire parishes of All Saint's and St Peters on Shrovetide Tuesday in 1846.
By the turn of the twentieth century, the growing popularity of and accessibility to sport went hand in hand with the radical concept of recreation. Participatory sport for the working classes was found principally in the form of association football, or soccer, and to a greater extent in the north of England, rugby. In the spring of 1914, King George V watched Burnley beat Liverpool in the FA Cup Final in front of 72,778 spectators. With the outbreak of war a few months later, men from the upper classes were 'allowed' to join regiments such as the First Sportsman's Battalion, the 23rd Royal Fusiliers. Gentlemen viewed sport as a pastime undertaken according to gentlemanly conduct with strict adherence to rules and fair play. It was not about winning, it was about taking part. In times of war, gentlemen became officers. To Britain's elite, the Battle of Waterloo was won on the playing fields of Eton. War was simply an extension of sport played at home, as the lyrics of the popular 1914 song 'Your King and Country' make plain:
We've watched you playing cricket and every kind of game.
At football, golf and polo you men have made your name.
But now your country calls you to play your part in war.
And no matter what befalls you we shall love you all the more.
Sir Henry Newbolt's 'Vitai Lampada' was a popular poem that had for some time prior to the global conflict peddled the same union of sport and war:
The River of death has brimmed its banks,
And England's far, and Honour a name,
But the voice of a schoolboy rallies the ranks:
'Play up! Play up! And play the game.'
Endurance, submission to discipline, good temper, judgment, quickness of observation and self-control were all qualities deemed essential in a good polo player as in a good soldier. Lower down the social scale, however, it was football that was used during the first months of the First World War as a major incentive to enlistment, offering the chance to participate in what was described as 'The Greatest Game of all'.
Sport as a symbol for war and peace continues to motivate subsequent generations, but participation has never been enough. Losing is not an option. The heaviest member of India's first ever rugby team, Minal Pastala, maintained that 'competitive sport is like a war'. The eccentric American Media mogul, owner of the Atlanta Braves, evoker of the Goodwill Games and winner of the coveted America's Cup, Ted Turner, famously echoed George Orwell in stating that 'sport is like a war without the killing'. And Vietnam veteran, Michael Clancy, captured the irony well when he wrote in a song: 'there'll never be a sport quite like war'.
Sport has kept prisoners of war alive during the most appalling states of depravation, or has focused the mind on freedom. During the Second World War the Red Cross despatched footballs, rugby balls, cricket and tennis equipment and boxing gloves to captured troops. Otherwise, prisoners made do with what was at hand. British prisoners held at Stalag Luft III in Germany made golf balls from string and later more sophisticated versions manufactured from rubber gym shoes stitched in leather. They even built a golf course with 18 holes of 50–70 yards. The same camp gave rise to the classic prisoner of war film, The Wooden Horse where vaulting provided the screen for Allied soldiers' escape attempts.
In 1971 table tennis led to a discussion that resulted in a thawing of the relationship between the United States and China. What became known as 'ping-pong diplomacy' paved the way for President Nixon's breakthrough visit to China. 'It's fascinating what sport can do' recalled former US Secretary of State, Colin Powell, prior to a high-drama cricket series between India and Pakistan, which, he believed, would end decades of hostility. He pointed out that when people come together and travelled to each other's countries to watch a conflict played out on the field of sport, they better appreciate their differences. At the outbreak of the First World War some of Britain's leading sportsmen were among the first to join up. And of all the tennis and rugby players, rowers, athletes and cricketers, it was football that provided the bulk of professional sporting volunteers.
By the close of 1914 it is estimated that half-a-million men had joined up at football matches. By the following spring, all spectator sport throughout the British Isles, including professional football, had been banned. The book Abide With Me – written in 2003 by Frances David – celebrates the 89th anniversary of the Glossop North End players volunteering for duty at the local community hall. Here, as elsewhere throughout the country, young footballers especially were targeted because they were the most fit and disciplined of the Nation's youth. Through the memory, documents and letters of one widow, Abide With Me centres on the Derbyshire players who came to volunteer as part of a football battalion and how they ultimately sacrificed their young lives.
The most famous football battalion was the 17th (Service) Battalion (1st Football), or the Duke of Cambridge Own (Middlesex) Regiment, raised at the Richmond Athletic Ground on 12 December 1914 by the Right Honourable William Joynson Hicks, Member of Parliament for Brentford. Like the Artists', the Civil Service and other 'branded' rifle battalions raised primarily from a specific profession or group, the 17th Middlesex was comprised mostly of football players. In November 1915, it embarked for France where it was transferred to 6th brigade 2nd Division under the command of Frank Buckley, the first professional football manager of the modern school, appointed by Leeds. As a player, Buckley was a tough centre half, turning out for Aston Villa, Brighton, Manchester United, Manchester City, Birmingham, Derby County and Bradford City, and winning a cap for England against Ireland just before the outbreak of war. Having fought in the Boer War, he acquired the rank of major with The Footballers' Battalion and was wounded in the shoulder and lung in 1916. 'The Major', as he became known, recovered to become manager of Wolverhampton Wanderers.
While the 17th and its companion battalion, the 23rd (Service) attracted many London players, the 16th Royal Scots was doing the same north of the border. Author Jack Alexander meticulously lays out their story in his book, McCrae's Battalion, which was formed by Sir George McCrae in response to the call for sportsmen throughout the land to exchange the field of play for that of battle. For those who did not, the third Earl of Durham informed a patriotic meeting held on 11 November 1914 that he 'almost wished that the Germans would drop a shell among these footballers some Saturday afternoon' as the best method of 'waking up the young men'. Weeks later and every member of Heart of Midlothian – Scotland's most successful team – enlisted for the new Edinburgh battalion, inspiring many other footballers and fans to do likewise. The Edinburgh Evening News was moved to rebuke Celtic's win over Hearts for the championship in so far as it and Rangers had yet to send 'a single prominent player to the Army'. There was only one football champion in Scotland, it concluded, 'and its colours are maroon and khaki'. Seven members of the Hearts team never returned home. Three of them, Harry Wattie, Duncan Currie and Ernie Ellis, were killed on the first day of the Somme offensive.
McCrae's Battalion, which included athletes from all sports, created a belief that the Germans would be ill-matched against such a physically well-honed and disciplined force. The Greater Game, a recent publication by respected battlefield guides Clive Harris and Julian Whippy, looks at a great number of sporting icons who fell in the First World War, across all the major sports including rugby union and rugby league, ice hockey, rowing, cricket and predominantly football. This focus on the beautiful game has drawn mild criticism from at least one reviewer, but then some sociologists and historians believe that football has become so popular because it requires abilities such as aim, speed, agility and tactics synonymous with warfare.
In both World Wars footballs made their way to British regiments as an important means of maintaining the fitness of troops and keeping up their morale. In the First World War it is said that no British troops ever travelled without footballs or the energy to kick them. One newspaper campaign saw thousands of footballs despatched to troops in France.
As the public schools and universities transformed a chaotic rural pastime, so a significant number of the officer class acquired a taste for the game. Those of The Royal Engineers won the FA Cup in 1875 and were losing finalists on three occasions. Otherwise, football was predominantly the preserve of enlisted men. As well as a core element in the British Army's physical training programme, the biggest influence on the growth of the game was overseas in the days of empire. In the 1890s, regimental clubs in the Far East began to play against clubs in Singapore and Hong Kong. In Africa, army teams played in the first organised competitions in Cairo and in the Ethiopian capital Addis Ababa. The British Army was also instrumental in taking football to South Africa during the Boer Wars when it relied heavily on native baggage carriers. Games of football began to be played between the natives and soldiers and so the sport took off. In India a football tournament between regiments stationed in Calcutta led to the Duran Cup, the third oldest football tournament in the world, first won by the Royal Scots Fusiliers in 1888. Local clubs were formed and were soon claiming famous victories. As one newspaper reported: 'It fills every Indian's heart with joy and pride to know that rice-eating, malaria-ridden barefooted Bengalis have got the better of beef-eating Herculean, booted John Bull in the peculiarly English sport.' A remnant of Britain's colonial past survives (at the time of writing) as The Kop at Anfield, named in memory of the many Liverpool lads serving in the British army who died in the fierce battle fought in January 1900 against the Boers at Spion Kop, or Spy Hill.
In his beautifully illustrated book, War Game, children's writer Michael Foreman tells the story of four friends that were in reality his uncles Will, Lacey, Billy and Freddie, all of whom were killed in the First World War. Foreman's moving account begins in the summer of 1914 with the four lads playing football near their home in Suffolk and ends at Christmas time with 'an energetic match, played across the wastes of No Man's Land, with no rules or referee, and greatcoats and caps for goals'. A few days later and 'the friendly Germans from Saxony' were replaced by less favoured troops from Prussia. Countering their attack, the British Tommies scramble over the top and in a dramatic conclusion, Freddie, who still has the football, boots it towards the enemy. The others follow, as one by one they are all tackled and eventually cut down by machine-gun fire. As War Game encompasses the complete spectrum of footballing bravado peculiar to the First World War, so it reinforces a mythology that blends fact with fiction.
In Great War and Modern Memory, Paul Fussell surveys First World War poetry, drama, fiction, memoirs, letters and general culture, 'finding in them earlier influences, and also tracing their influence on subsequent twentieth-century writing, culture, and thought'. In this he explains 'one way of showing the sporting spirit was to kick a football toward the enemy lines while attacking' and is the only historian to credit the 1st Battalion/18th London Regiment at Loos in 1915 as the first to show this spirit. 'Soon,' he adds, 'it achieved the status of a conventional act of bravado' which was ultimately exported far beyond the Western Front. At Beersheba in Turkey in November 1917 Arthur ('Bosky') Burton took part in an attack on the Turkish lines and proudly reported home: 'one of the men had a football. How it came there goodness knows. Anyway we kicked off and rushed the first [Turkish] guns, dribbling the ball with us.'
CHAPTER 2
Footballs at Dawn
That sport and war are inextricably linked as a potent mixture of adversarial posturing is all too evident to this day when an England versus Germany football match is bound by official warnings not to mention 'the war'. What enmity exists is predominantly expressed by English fans and refined to a mostly comedic cocktail of terrace banter agitating late twentieth-century political correctness. Before 1938 an England versus Germany football match carried none of the baggage that it does today. Although a minor episode in the greater scheme of things, football was hugely important to men of both sides and across all ranks in the First World War. Days before the famous Christmas Truce of 1914, Major John Charteris, Staff Officer to General Haig, having nothing much to do, 'turned out to play football for the staff against a team of cavalry' which included the Prince of Wales. The amount of newspaper coverage afforded the famous Truce was because it happened over such a wide area and extended period of time. It immediately captured the popular imagination, carrying as far as Australia and the United States. What principally kept it alive were the number of letters sent to the newspapers rather than editorial comment. The principal reaction was one of amazement. On 1 January 1915 the South Wales Echo reported:
When the history of the war is written one of the episodes which chroniclers will seize upon as one of its most surprising features will undoubtedly be the manner in which the foes celebrated Christmas. How they fraternized in each other's trenches, played football, rode races, held sing songs, and surprisingly adhered to their unofficial truce will certainly go down as one the greatest surprises of a surprising war.
(Continues...)
Excerpted from The Footballer of Loos by Ed Harris. Copyright © 2014 Ed Harris. Excerpted by permission of The History Press.
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